Theft, Homicide and Crime in Late Anglo-Saxon Law

Of reaflac and rapina: accusations of violence in two Old English lawsuits and the Libellus Æthelwoldi

“…Anglo-Saxon society regarded theft as a furtive act; in Tom Lambert's words, it left 'victims impotent, with no knowledge of where to direct their anger'. 39 Theft, unlike reaflac, was thus met with the death penalty from the seventh century onwards, as Ine's law code stated that captured thieves would be killed or pay their wergild to the king. 40 Roberts's study of the Old and Middle English vocabulary for theft and robbery reveals reaflac's enduring connection with its root, reaf, which later became 'reavery', 'robbing', 'rape', and 'robbers', while the Old English terms associated with theft (þeof, þeofend, stalung, and stalu) later became 'theft', 'thieving', 'stealth', and 'stealing'.…”

Hospitality, Protection and Refuge in Early English Law

“…And because strangers' characters were unknown, locals could not rule out the possibility that their intentions were hostile. The most obvious theme running through Anglo-Saxon legal texts is the hatred and fear of thieves: men who not only take other people's property but make every effort to conceal their responsibility, and thus to leave victims with no hope of recouping their losses (Lambert 2012a). It is not surprising that the stranger, his intentions suspect and with no local ties through which he might be pursued, raised the spectre of theft; a stranger actually caught behaving furtively -failing, as the law quoted above envisaged, to announce himself in a place he had no reason to be -was so obviously threatening a figure that he did not deserve a second chance.…”